User:A.adams821/sandbox

Early Life
After she was born she and her family moved to Chico, California where her and her brother Richard grew up with their parents, Leonard Shoemaker and Hazel Arthur. Spellmann, (before marriage), received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history, political science, and English literature from Chico State University in Chicago, Illinois (3) and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology (2). On August 18th 1951, she married Gene Shoemaker (1).

Shoemaker gave birth to three children: Christy, Linda, and Pat Shoemaker, and the family lived in Grand Junction, Colorado, Menlo Park, California and Pasadena, California before finally settling down in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she worked in collaboration with her husband at the Lowell Observatory (1).

Career
The first job Shoemaker held was at a local school teaching the seventh grade (2). After not feeling satisfied with her work there, she quit to take care of her three children. At the age of 51, once her children had grown up and moved out, Shoemaker started work as a field assistant for her husband working on his search program mapping and analyzing impact craters. (3). In 1980, Shoemaker was hired at the United States Geological Survey as a visiting scientist in the astronomy branch, and then in 1989 began work as an astronomy research professor at Northern Arizona University (3). She concentrated her work on searching for comets and planet-crossing asteroids. (1). Teamed with astronomer David H. Levy, the Shoemakers identified Shoemaker-Levy 9, a fragmented comet orbiting the planet Jupiter on March 24, 1993. (5). After Gene’s death in 1997, Shoemaker continued to work at the Lowell Observatory with Levy, and continues to work there today.

Awards
Shoemaker received the Rittenhouse Medal of the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society in 1988 and the Scientist of the Year Award in 1995.